President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I don’t think Pokémon Go would become a thing among the people killing each other in Chicago if guns were harder to come by legally.

 

Not Chicago.

 

The one thing that is vitally important and I can't seem to find out easily is how long a typical handgun stays in circulation. In other words, if access were choked off, at what pace would the current supply dwindle?

I have a book idea percolating in my head right now. Gun violence ground zero is 15 miles away.

 

Dana Loesch is only interested in generating further gun sales and making cheap political points to do so. She is unconcerned about the human cost not only of mass shootings, but of the day to day risk to children of color.

Chicago is complicated. Most of the guns in that city come from nearby areas with less restrictive gun laws, as H Paraquat points out. The current gun madness there really started as an unintended consequence of tearing down Cabrini Green and the turf war that ensued.

And many illegal guns begin as legal guns that are stolen from their owners. So the lower the number of guns overall, the fewer gun crimes. As has been demonstrated repeatedly.

The mental health thing is thorny. I don't think we've nearly rebuilt the system we dismantled in the 70s. The bureaucratic hoops folks have to jump through to get plugged into the very limited existing system are just as relevant as any stigma to their outcomes.

We need the neighborhood clinics we were promised 40 years ago.

And all these problems exist in New York City, too, but the rate of gun violence here has plummeted.

 

Thank God for Rudy!

 

We'll see. It's coming.

 

Extrapolating from here, CPD removed about 10,000 guns from the streets last year.

More Than 5,000 Illegal Guns Seized So Far In 2017: Chicago Police

 

Donald Trump’s CPAC speech is a reminder that he’s a pitifully weak president

 

But this is just punishing law-abiding citizens for the sins of criminals. It’s not right. It’s authoritarianish.

Stricter laws regarding high-capacity weapons are one thing, stricter laws in the general sense is just another backdoor attempt at getting rid of guns, regardless of the rhetoric.

 

I don't know what similar books are out there or in the pipeline, but I suspect you could sell a book about Chicago gun violence with a strong proposal in about 15 seconds.

 

Looks like he did plead out.

 

Or a magazine piece.

The questions I'm really interested in are:

(1) How did Chicago get here? (You could trace it back to Capone, really.)

(2) If the gun laws were stricter, how quickly would the gun supply dwindle to the point that it would have a measurable impact on violence.

Regarding No. 2, a lot of people talk out their ass about it on both sides. But what would really happen? (Kind of like that, "The Earth Without Us" book. Speculative ... nonfiction.)